Snow is a Four Letter Word

I have had this argument time and time again but I will always stand by my convictions that the bad of snow outweighs the good. Mostly, I’ve had this conversation at the beach when all our surfer friends are like “But you get snow days and you get to play in the snow! You can go snowboarding!” Um, yes, I could…but I don’t. And I can support with a multitude of legitimate reasons why snow is not as great as everyone thinks.

Yes, it’s pretty. But you know what else is? Fall and summer and spring. Winter is really drab and gross and snow does make it prettier but are you willing to have all your plans ruined for pretty? So many times have I had to cancel plans that I was really looking forward to because of snow that it’s ridiculous (Granted sometimes my alternative plans are probably something I’m better off doing). Last Halloween (Yes, it snowed on Halloween), we were supposed to have a party at Kat’s house. We’d been planning everything since August and Michael and I had costumes to go as a gangster and flapper. I was super stoked until everything got cancelled because of snow and I didn’t have electricity for the entire weekend. Things weren’t terrible because I spent all weekend eating buffalo chicken dip, sushi and Twisted Tea and going to a bonfire and another party but still, I really wanted to go. Then not long after, Michael and I had plans to visit our friend at his college a few hours away for a night of drinking and partying (or whatever nerdy version of that I got stuck doing thanks to the guys). We couldn’t go because it snowed up there and I’m not the one who is going to be driving despite I’m the one with 4WD. Most recently, as in yesterday, I woke up thinking, “Okay, I’ve got self-defense class and then a meeting and then the gym and then a club thing.” Well, my class ended up cancelled and I am pretty into this class (I may have made Michael wrestle me for quite a while the other day so I could practice being in an attack situation). Instead of that, I had to rush around figuring what was still going on.

Snow can even inhibit your plans before you accumulate anything and before the day even arrives. I’ve been hearing for a few days now that it was supposed to snow today–the day when Michael and I had plans to hang out and try a yoga class for me. We’ve been going back and forth about whether or not I’m coming over since it all began. See…snow can even lead to fights without even actually being there.

So, on the other hand, yes, you can do lots of fun things in the snow. You can snowboard and have snowball fights and sled and make snowmen. But those are only fun for so long. You know what happens when you play in snow for a really long time? You get wet and clod and miserable and have to stop playing no matter how much fun you are having. This past snow, my parents, Devin, and I had a snowball fight. That was fun until my gloves were so wet that it was warmer to take them off than wear them. Then we built a snowman, which was fun until we realized you finish in a matter a minutes and the fun is over. Finally, we decided to go sledding. First off, this was monumental for me because I had not been on a sled since the eighth grade when I broke my leg badly while sledding. That was a lot of fun–though scary when I thought my mom was going to die when shooting across the road–until we were so wet and cold that it was painful walking back to our house.

More sucky than all of that is one big thing that snow brings. You cannot get out of your house and you have a lack of electricity. Okay, that applies to most people. We are a little different. First off, we live in the sticks so there’s not a house around us that doesn’t have at least one 4WD and we have 4 plus 2 tractors. We can usually get out even if we don’t go very far, which is very important when you don’t have electricity. Why, you might ask? Because we lose electricity so much that we have a generator that runs our entire house. However, it uses a fair bit of gas (still better than no electric for days on end) so we have to run to gas stations so we can keep it running. We’d still have heat without it because we use wood but it absolutely sucks when you don’t have power for day after day…trust me on this one.

Today’s forecast is calling for a couple inches and I am already miserable. We cancelled our plans today (no, yoga class 😦 ) to be safe but that means there will be quite a good bit of time before we make plans again. I want to get out of the house but we’ll see if we get around to that because it’s supposed to go on for 6 hours once it starts. Usually it means that something delicious is being cooked in the crock pot and there’s a pan of wonderful cornbread in the oven (A pan of cornbread makes everything better) but since my daddy has to leave for work in the early afternoon, we aren’t even getting that. This snow is going to be worse than most because it’s just a big meanie. I’m packing up and moving to North Carolina. Who’s with me?